EDITOR'S CHOICE -- SCOTT SUTTELL

Employers seem in the mood to hire, here and elsewhere

At least that's what ManpowerGroup found in its survey of more than 18,000 employers in 100 metropolitan statistical areas, according to this story from Forbes.com.

“Of the surveyed employers, 18% anticipate an increase in staffing levels in their fourth-quarter hiring plans, while 8% expect a decrease in payrolls,” the website reports. “The difference between those numbers gives you what ManpowerGroup calls a net employment outlook of 10% — or 13% when seasonally adjusted, which is up from 11% for the same period last year and 12% last quarter.” (Seventy-two percent of employers expect no change in their staffing, and the final 2% of employers are uncertain.)

The Cleveland-Elyria-Mentor MSA matches the national average almost exactly, with 17% of employers planning to hire in the next three months and 7% planning cuts, for a net employment outlook of +10%.

Toledo is even better, with a 24%-7% split leading to a net employment outlook of +17%, good for 12th place among all metro areas.

ManpowerGroup found a 15%-6% split in the Akron MSA, for a net employment outlook of +9%. Youngstown is at 14%-6%, for a +8% net employment outlook.

Jorge Perez, senior vice president of Manpower, North America, tells Forbes.com that the survey “continues to show consistent improvements in hiring optimism among U.S. employers.” He adds, “We expect this consistent, measured growth in hiring to continue into next year.”

This and that

BFFs: Politically divided Washington, D.C., can't get much done these days, but it turns out U.S. Sen. Rob Portman, R-Cincinnati, and a prominent Democrat — Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew — have a close working relationship and are trying to change that.

“Portman was the first person — even before President Barack Obama — to call Lew after the Senate confirmed him as Treasury secretary Feb. 27, and the bipartisan pair talked six more times during Lew's first five months on the job,” Bloomberg reports. “That's more contact than Lew had with any other Republican and with any member of Congress except for Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus, according to Lew's calendar.”

The Lew-Portman relationship, built on their shared background as White House budget directors, “may be an avenue through which lawmakers can attempt to resolve their disputes over raising the federal debt ceiling and changing the tax code,” according to the news service.

Sen. Portman also “may be a Republican the administration asks to support Obama's nominee for Federal Reserve chairman,” Bloomberg adds.

The first-term senator tells Bloomberg of his talks with Mr. Lew, “They're private conversations where we're trying to figure out common ground.”

“I think there's a way for us to get through this first stage; I'm not sure the grand bargain is there.”

The downsizing reflects the second-largest U.S. bank's "ongoing efforts to streamline our facilities and align our cost structure with market realities," primarily weak refinancing activity, Bank of America said in a statement in response to questions about the planned layoffs.

Bank of America is closing two Cleveland-area locations by Oct. 31: 25900 Science Park Drive in Beachwood, where about 650 employees in home loan fulfillment and about 350 to 400 in consumer banking services will lose their jobs, and 6100 Oak Tree Blvd. in Independence, where about 55 employees in home loan fulfillment are affected.

Acting, some experts say, “is exactly the kind of demanding, brain-stimulating activity that can help maintain and perhaps improve memory and overall cognitive health,” the story notes.

“It goes beyond memorization,” says Dr. Friedman, who is 60 and holds a doctorate in theater education. “One of the tenets that Stanislavsky talked about was 'being in the moment.' You have to stay focused in the here and now. You can't think about the cast party that night.”

The Times says Dr. Helga Noice, 73, and her husband, Tony Noice, 79, have been conducting research on acting and its cognitive effects since the 1990s.

From the story:

In a study published in 2008 by the journal Aging, Neuropsychology and Cognition, 122 older adults from four different residences in western Illinois took hourlong introductory acting classes taught by Tony Noice, meeting twice a week for four weeks.

Helga Noice did before-and-after testing of participants to gauge the effects of the mental effort involved in learning acting. Significant improvements were found in memory, comprehension, creativity and other cognitive skills. Subjects showed a 19 percent increase in immediate word recall (a test of memory), a 37 percent increase in delayed story recall (a comprehension test) and a 12 percent increase in word fluency (a measure of creativity).

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